johnlink ranks THE SEASONING HOUSE (2012)

This sounded like the sort of horror movie on the edge of where I can enjoy something versus hate watching it. I’m just nt a fan of the torture genre. This promised to be a tough, gritty, revenge flick. On the other hand, it had received quite a bit of positive response from horror fans. I gave it a run, but tentatively so.

Angel (Rosie Day) is a deaf mute who has been taken by some pretty terrible people. Young women are held captive in beds as Viktor (Kevin Howarth) runs a brothel utilizing these drugged up slaves. Angel, if you can sort of consider her lucky, is tasked with prepping those women rather than being one of them. She cleans the blood up after rough guys come in. She shoots up women with heroine to keep them sedated. But she is subject only to Viktor’s advances.

The opening of the movie is brutal. We see how little care there is for these women. There is absolutely no entertainment value to be derived from the first act. While Director Paul Hyatt does not exploit these women the way the male characters do – there is no gratuitous nudity here to turn viewer into voyeur – he has no problem showing some brutal and extreme violence. All of this is to set up the inevitable moment when Angel will snap and start going for revenge. She has the advantage of being able to secretly crawl through the ventilation system of the house (something which plays as a little gimmicky) and she is able to avoid detection from her would be killers after she offs one of the soldiers who has murdered a friend. That soldier is led by the big bad, Goran (Sean Pertwee) who happens to be the guy who oversaw the murder of Angel’s sister.

While all of this comes across as amazingly coincidental (though nowhere near as coincidental as two houses we stumble into later in the film), the movie snaps along at a smart enough pace to keep up from noticing too much. There is absolutely no humor in this film at all. There are very, very brief moments of joy between Angel and her doomed friend Vanya (Dominique Provost-Chalkley). But, for the most part, this is a fast moving film which uses the cache of its violence at the outset to build tension throughout.

In terms of the revenge-horror genre, this is a noteworthy entry. Instead of being an exploitation film, it is a movie which really does feel for its victims. The point truly feels like survival whereas something like the grandaddy of the genre – I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE – invites the viewer to enjoy some rape and then cleanse those sins by enjoying watching the rapists get killed off in creative ways. THE SEASONING HOUSE doesn’t look for its viewer to have a good time. It could care less about the viewer. It is a film about Angel’s survival. In that way, it is at least unique – even if it is often hard to watch.